posted
Check this one , people. Usually I have no qualms about genetic researsh, but, for some reason, this one freaks me out. I mean...do they really know what those brain cells are for?
Maybe I've been watching too much "Pinky and the Brain".
posted
No. I mean, that's the essence of a stem cell. It's an immature neuron that has yet to form into what specific neuron it will be. So, yeah, they don't know what you're FOR, but we know pretty much what they do, and from what they do...well, form follows function.
Or something.
Yeah, that experiment is sorta...creepy.
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posted
It's not that odd. I mean, you have to start somewhere with research on living tissues. Mice are well studied lab animals, so seeing what happens when you inject human stem cells into developing mice is a good way to test what MIGHT happen if you do the same someday in humans.
I think it's very encouraging that the cells migrated and began functioning appropriately to a particular region of the brain.
The experiment where they add human stem cells to a mouse at the blastocyst stage is a little weirder. I suspect that if the human cells develop at all along a human pattern, the mouse host will simply reject the embryo. If it grew at a normal human pattern, it would become too big for a mouse to give birth.
Of course, if this is just a test tube experiment, they'll just see what happens to those cells over the course of a few stages of embryonic development (as many as they can keep going in vitro -- I'm not sure how well they can sustain developing embryos these days...)
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